I used to edit Innovation Management. My book, "The Elastic Enterprise", co-authored with Nick Vitalari and described as a must read for companies that want to succeed in the new era of business - looks at how stellar companies have gone beyond innovation to a new form of wealth creation. I speak on new innovation paradigms.
I started my writing career in broadcasting and then got involved in the EU's attempt to create an ARPA-type unit, where I managed downstream satellite application pilots, at just the time commercial satellite services entered the market. I also wrote policy, pre the Web, on broadband applications, 3G (before it was invented), and Wired Cities.
I have written for many major outlets like the Wall St Journal, Times, HBR, and GigaOm, as well as producing TV for the BBC, Channel 4 and RTE. I am a research fellow at the Center For Digital Transformation at UC Irvine, where I am also an advisory board member, advisory board member at Crowdsourcing.org and Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research.
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Do You Believe Google or Microsoft, RIM or Nokia? An End of Year Reflection

One of the most interesting effects of the web is its massive impact on what we know. Not just on what we know – what we are capable of knowing. For enterprises it begs questions like – can you understand what 25,000 references to your company every day actually means to your business and your share price?

Does this volume of information indeed affect share price movements and corporate reputation? Of course it does. But a feature of change in 2012 was our inability to keep up with what we don’t know.

In a recent chat with DELL it turns out that there are indeed about 25,000 online references to the company each day.

In the case of Nokia, though, I think the company is still too device-centric (the Vasco De project, from an Israeli start up, is surely an example of how Nokia could have added value to its existing installed base of device owners).

But its social media supporters want to persuade us that that company’s devices are already its salvation. On the contrary I think Nokia needs to focus on its service layer and on innovating there. The point is though that the information ecosystem is populated with device talk, pushing an innovative discussion of Nokia’s future to the margins.

RIM’s new CEO has waged a very successful campaign to win developers over to his new OS, due out in the new year and that’s what the chart reflected. But in the dying days of this year, he had to concede that his service charges to network operators were coming down. And at the same time he was losing subscribers, suggesting that the share price movement was very much related to online sentiment and not to business fundamentals.

Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins, who will introduce the BlackBerry 10 operating system next month, told analysts on a Dec. 20 conference call that RIM faces pressure to reduce fees to “stay relevant in our markets.” The Waterloo, Ontario-based company dropped the most in more than four years on Dec. 21 in Toronto.

In a related vein (social media) Pamela James said here, on my part of Forbes recently, that there is a smear campaign against Google, originating from Microsoft. But reader and investor Walt French responded that behind the scenes Google had managed to create a near monopoly of mobile search, and presumably therefore a certain type of mobile ads.

What I think all this means, at the end of 2012, is we have all this huge potential in social communications and companies like Google, Microsoft, RIM and Nokia are learning how to use it to create and perpetuate their own version of reality, while we often talk past each other.

Just as enterprises cannot possibly sort through 25,000 references a day, neither can we. In 2012 I felt somewhat duped by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and RIM, and I felt Nokia did not give itself enough of a chance with its messaging.

Though I am a supporter of all four companies, I hope in 2013 there will be more time, and the tools, to make it easier, indeed possible, to understand what is really going on.

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